Phantom Galaxy (M74)

Messier 74 (M74, NGC 628) is one of the nicest examples of so-called "grand-design" spiral galaxies seen face-on, so that its spiral structure stands out conspicuously. Its distance may be about 32 million light years. Then its spiral arms are about 1000 light years broad. They are traced with clusters of blue young stars and pinkish colored diffuse gaseous nebulae (H II regions), and reach out to cover a region of more than 10 minutes of arc in diameter, corresponding to roughly 95,000 light years, or about the same size as our Milky Way galaxy.